When the Party Cracked

In 1848, President Polk could claim success on all four of his campaign promises.  He had reduced tariffs, reestablished an independent treasury, settled the Oregon boundary with Great Britain, and acquired California from Mexico.  Promises made and promises delivered.  This should have been a boon to his party.  Instead, his success broke his party.  That vast stretch of land was now up for grabs between the free states and the slave states.  Many northern Democrats weren't keen on the extension of slavery.  These voters split from the Democratic Party to join the Free Soil Party.  Former President Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) was chosen as the presidential nominee and Charles Francis Adams - son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams - as the VP nominee.  Though the Free Soil Party didn't earn a single electoral vote, it did manage to accumulate 10% of the popular vote.  The Free Soil Party out-performed the Democrats in three states.

Of course, Vermont and Massachusetts had voted for Henry Clay (Whig) in 1844, so Van Buren did little damage to the Democrats there. The important state was New York with 36 electoral votes.  In 1844, President Polk carried the state by a margin of 5,100 votes.  Native New Yorker Van Buren took all those votes and much more.  General Taylor, the Whig candidate, defeated Lewis Cass by an electoral vote of 163 to 127.  If Cass had carried New York, that would have been exactly reversed.  Van Buren knew full well that he had no chance of winning and that he was almost certainly handing the presidency to the Whigs, but he had moved toward the abolitionist camp over the years.

This was the second - and final - time that the Whigs won the presidency.  Like the previous time, the president died during his term: Harrison had only served a month as president and Taylor died after 16 months.  By the next presidential election, it was the Whig Party that unraveled.  By the mid 1850s, the disaffected Democrats, the Free Soil Party, the American Party, and various other splinter groups formed the Republican Party.